1. The growth of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat in all countries has provoked convulsive attempts by the bourgeoisie and its agents in workers' organizations to find ideological-political arguments in defense of the rule of the exploiters. Among these arguments, the condemnation of dictatorship and the defense of democracy are particularly emphasized. The falsity and hypocrisy of such an argument, repeated in a thousand variations in the capitalist press and at the conference of the yellow International in February 1919 in Berne, are evident to all who do not wish to betray the fundamental propositions of socialism.

2. First and foremost, this argument operates with the concepts of "democracy in general" and "dictatorship in general," without raising the question of which class is in question. Such a non-class or supra-class, allegedly universal, formulation of the question is a direct mockery of the fundamental doctrine of socialism—namely, the doctrine of class struggle—which socialists who have gone over to the side of the bourgeoisie profess in words but forget in deed. For in not a single civilized capitalist country does there exist "democracy in general," but only bourgeois democracy; and the question is not one of "dictatorship in general," but of the dictatorship of the oppressed class, i.e., the proletariat, over the oppressors and exploiters, i.e., the bourgeoisie, for the purpose of overcoming the resistance which the exploiters offer in the struggle for their rule.

3. History teaches that no oppressed class has ever come to power and could have come to power without passing through a period of dictatorship—that is, the conquest of political power and the violent suppression of the most desperate, most violent resistance, which stops at no crime, resistance which the exploiters always offer. The bourgeoisie, whose rule is now defended by socialists speaking against "dictatorship in general" and waxing eloquent for "democracy in general," conquered power in the advanced countries at the cost of a series of uprisings, civil wars, violent suppression of kings, feudal lords, slaveholders, and their attempts at restoration. Thousands and millions of times socialists of all countries, in their books, pamphlets, in resolutions of their congresses, in their agitational speeches, explained to the people the class character of these bourgeois revolutions, this bourgeois dictatorship. Therefore, the present defense of bourgeois democracy under the guise of talk about "democracy in general" and the present outcries and shrieks against the dictatorship of the proletariat under the guise of cries about "dictatorship in general" constitute a direct betrayal of socialism, a factual going over to the side of the bourgeoisie, a denial of the right of the proletariat to its own, proletarian, revolution, a defense of bourgeois reformism precisely at that historical moment when bourgeois reformism throughout the world has suffered complete collapse and when war has created a revolutionary situation.

4. All socialists, in explaining the class character of bourgeois civilization, bourgeois democracy, bourgeois parliamentarism, have expressed the thought which Marx and Engels stated with the greatest scientific precision in the words that the most democratic bourgeois republic is nothing other than a machine for the suppression of the working class by the bourgeoisie, the masses of toilers by a handful of capitalists{199}. There is not a single revolutionary, not a single Marxist, among those now shouting against dictatorship and for democracy, who has not sworn and pledged before the workers that he recognizes this fundamental truth of socialism; but now, when the revolutionary proletariat is stirring and moving toward the destruction of this machine of oppression and toward the conquest of proletarian dictatorship, these traitors to socialism depict the matter as if the bourgeoisie had granted the toilers "pure democracy," as if the bourgeoisie had renounced resistance and was ready to obey the majority of the toilers, as if there had been and is no state machine for the suppression of labor by capital in a democratic republic.

5. The Paris Commune, which all those wishing to be considered socialists extol in words, because they know that the working masses sympathize with it warmly and sincerely, has shown with particular clarity the historical conditionality and limited value of bourgeois parliamentarism and bourgeois democracy—institutions which were highly progressive compared to the Middle Ages, but which inevitably required radical transformation in the epoch of proletarian revolution. It was precisely Marx, who best appreciated the historical significance of the Commune, who in analyzing it demonstrated the exploitative character of bourgeois democracy and bourgeois parliamentarism—when the oppressed classes receive the right once every few years to decide which representative of the propertied classes will "represent and trample" (ver– und zertreten) the people in parliament{200}. Now, precisely when the Soviet movement, embracing the entire world, continues the work of the Commune before the eyes of all, the traitors to socialism forget the concrete experience and concrete lessons of the Paris Commune, repeating the old bourgeois rubbish about "democracy in general." The Commune was not a parliamentary institution.

6. The significance of the Commune, furthermore, consisted in the fact that it attempted to smash and destroy down to its foundations the bourgeois state apparatus—the bureaucratic, judicial, military, and police apparatus—replacing it with a self-governing mass organization of workers, which knew no separation of legislative and executive power. All contemporary bourgeois-democratic republics, including the German one, which traitors to socialism mockingly call proletarian, preserve this state apparatus. Thus it is confirmed again and again with complete clarity that the cries in defense of "democracy in general" in fact represent a defense of the bourgeoisie and its exploitative privileges.

7. "Freedom of assembly" may be taken as an example of the demands of "pure democracy." Every conscious worker, who has not severed ties with his class, will immediately understand that it would be absurd to promise freedom of assembly to the exploiters at a time and in circumstances when the exploiters are offering resistance to their overthrow and defending their privileges. The bourgeoisie, when it was revolutionary, gave no "freedom of assembly" to monarchists and nobility in England in 1649 or in France in 1793—those who were calling in foreign troops and "assembling" to organize attempts at restoration. If the present bourgeoisie, long since become reactionary, demands of the proletariat that it guarantees in advance, despite whatever resistance the capitalists may offer to their expropriation, "freedom of assembly" for the exploiters, the workers will only laugh at the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie.

On the other hand, the workers know perfectly well that "freedom of assembly" even in the most democratic bourgeois republic is an empty phrase, for the rich have all the best public and private buildings at their disposal, as well as sufficient leisure for assemblies and protection of them by the bourgeois apparatus of power. The proletarians of city and countryside and small peasants—that is, a gigantic majority of the population—have neither one nor the other nor the third. While affairs stand thus, "equality," i.e., "pure democracy," is deception. To achieve real equality, to carry out democracy in fact for the toilers, one must first take from the exploiters all public buildings and luxurious private buildings; one must first give leisure to the toilers; one must ensure that the freedom of their assemblies is guarded by armed workers, not by petty nobility or capitalist officers with cowed soldiers.

Only after such a change can one speak without mockery to the workers, to the toilers, to the poor, of freedom of assembly and equality. And it is for no one but the vanguard of the toilers—the proletariat throwing off the exploiters, the bourgeoisie—to bring about such a change.

8. "Freedom of the press" is likewise one of the main slogans of "pure democracy." Again, the workers know, and socialists of all countries have admitted a million times, that this freedom is deception so long as the best printing presses and the largest stocks of paper are seized by the capitalists and so long as the power of capital over the press remains, which is manifested all over the world the more brightly, the more starkly, the more cynically, the more developed are democracy and republican order—as, for example, in America. To achieve real equality and genuine democracy for the toilers, for the workers and peasants, one must first take from capital the possibility of hiring writers, purchasing publishing houses, and bribing newspapers, and for this it is necessary to overthrow the yoke of capital, to overthrow the exploiters, to suppress their resistance. Capitalists have always called "freedom" the freedom to profit for the rich, the freedom of workers to die of hunger. Capitalists call freedom of the press the freedom of the rich to bribe the press, the freedom to use wealth to fabricate and forge so-called public opinion. The defenders of "pure democracy" turn out once again in fact to be defenders of the most filthy, venal system of the rule of the wealthy over the means of enlightening the masses, turn out to be deceivers of the people, distracting them by plausible, attractive, and thoroughly false phrases from the concrete historical task of liberating the press from its enslavement to capital. True freedom and equality will be such an order as communists are building, in which there will be no possibility of growing rich at others' expense, in which there will be no objective possibility either directly or indirectly of subjecting the press to the power of money, in which there will be no obstacles preventing every toiler (or group of toilers of any size) from having and exercising equal right to use public printing presses and public paper.

9. The history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries showed us even before the war what the so-called "pure democracy" actually is under capitalism. Marxists have always said that the more developed, the "purer" democracy is, the more naked, sharp, and merciless becomes the class struggle, the "purer" becomes the oppression of capital and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The Dreyfus affair in republican France, the bloody massacres by gangs of mercenaries armed by capitalists against strikers in the free and democratic American republic—these and thousands of similar facts demonstrate the truth which the bourgeoisie vainly attempts to hide: that in the most democratic republics there actually prevails terror and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, manifesting itself openly every time the exploiters begin to fear that the power of capital is wavering.

10. The imperialist war of 1914–1918 finally exposed, even to backward workers, the true character of bourgeois democracy even in the freest republics—as the character of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Tens of millions were slaughtered for the enrichment of German or English groups of millionaires or billionaires, and in the freest republics military dictatorship of the bourgeoisie was established. This military dictatorship continues even after Germany's defeat in the Entente countries. It was precisely the war that opened the eyes of the toilers most of all, tore the false flowers from bourgeois democracy, showed the people the entire abyss of speculation and profit-making during the war and because of the war. In the name of "freedom and equality" the bourgeoisie waged this war; in the name of "freedom and equality" military suppliers enriched themselves in an unprecedented fashion. No efforts of the yellow Berne International can conceal from the masses the thoroughly exposed exploitative character of bourgeois freedom, bourgeois equality, bourgeois democracy.

11. In the most developed capitalist country on the European continent, in Germany, the first months of republican freedom brought by the overthrow of imperialist Germany showed German workers and the entire world what the true class essence of a bourgeois democratic republic is. The murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg is an event of world-historical importance not only because the finest people and leaders of the true proletarian, Communist International tragically perished, but also because for the most advanced European state—one can say without exaggeration: the most advanced in world scale—its class essence stands utterly exposed. If arrested men—that is, men taken under the protection of state power—could be murdered with impunity by officers and capitalists, under the government of social-patriots, then the democratic republic in which such a thing was possible is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. People who express their indignation at the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg but fail to understand this truth expose thereby either their stupidity or their hypocrisy. "Freedom" in one of the freest and most advanced republics in the world, in the German republic, is freedom with impunity to murder arrested leaders of the proletariat. And this cannot be otherwise so long as capitalism persists, for the development of democracy does not dull but sharpens class struggle, which, by virtue of all the results and consequences of war and its aftermath, has been brought to the boiling point.

Throughout the civilized world the expulsion of Bolsheviks is now taking place, their persecution, their imprisonment in jails—as, for example, in one of the freest bourgeois republics, Switzerland—pogroms against Bolsheviks in America, and so forth. From the perspective of "democracy in general" or "pure democracy" it is laughable that advanced, civilized, democratic countries, armed to the teeth, fear the presence on their soil of a few dozen people from backward, hungry, ruined Russia, which bourgeois newspapers call in tens of millions of copies wild, criminal, and so forth. It is clear that the social situation which could give rise to such a glaring contradiction is in fact the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

12. Under such circumstances the dictatorship of the proletariat is not only fully justified as a means of overthrowing the exploiters and suppressing their resistance, but is absolutely necessary for the entire mass of the toilers, as the only defense against the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, which has led to war and is preparing new wars.

The chief thing that socialists do not understand, and which constitutes their theoretical short-sightedness, their captivity to bourgeois prejudices, and their political betrayal of the proletariat, is that in capitalist society, whenever there is any serious sharpening of the class struggle inherent in its foundations, there can be nothing in between except the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of the proletariat. Every dream of something third is a reactionary lamentation of the petty bourgeoisie. This is witnessed by the experience of over a century of development of bourgeois democracy and the workers' movement in all advanced countries, and especially the experience of the last five years. This is also attested by the entire science of political economy, the entire content of Marxism, which elucidates the economic inevitability, under any commodity economy, of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, which can only be replaced by a class developed, multiplied, consolidated, and strengthened by the development of capitalism itself—the class of proletarians.

13. Another theoretical and political error of socialists consists in their failure to understand that the forms of democracy have inevitably changed over millennia, beginning with its germination in antiquity, as one ruling class has been replaced by another. In the ancient republics of Greece, in the cities of the Middle Ages, in advanced capitalist countries, democracy takes various forms and has various degrees of application. It would be the greatest absurdity to think that the profoundest revolution in human history, the first in the world transition of power from a minority of exploiters to a majority of the exploited, could take place within the old framework of old, bourgeois, parliamentary democracy, could take place without the most radical upheavals, without the creation of new forms of democracy, new institutions embodying new conditions of its application, and so forth.

14. The dictatorship of the proletariat resembles the dictatorship of other classes in that it is called forth by necessity, like any dictatorship, to suppress violently the resistance of a class losing political rule. The fundamental distinction of the dictatorship of the proletariat from the dictatorship of other classes—from the dictatorship of landowners in the Middle Ages, from the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in all civilized capitalist countries—consists in the fact that the dictatorship of landowners and of the bourgeoisie was violent suppression of the resistance of an enormous majority of the population, namely the toilers. On the contrary, the dictatorship of the proletariat is violent suppression of the resistance of the exploiters—that is, an insignificant minority of the population, landowners and capitalists.

From this, in turn, it follows that the dictatorship of the proletariat inevitably must bring with it not only a change in the forms and institutions of democracy, generally speaking, but precisely such a change as gives an unprecedented expansion of the actual use of democracy by those oppressed by capitalism, by the toiling classes.

And indeed, that form of the dictatorship of the proletariat which has already been worked out in practice—namely, Soviet power in Russia, the Räte-System[34] in Germany, Shop Stewards Committees and other similar Soviet institutions in other countries—all of them mean and realize for the toiling classes, that is, for the enormous majority of the population, such an actual possibility of using democratic rights and freedoms as never before existed, even approximately, in the best and most democratic bourgeois republics.

The essence of Soviet power consists in this: that the permanent and sole foundation of all state power, all the state apparatus, is the mass organization of precisely those classes which were oppressed by capitalism—that is, of workers and semi-proletarians (peasants not exploiting the labor of others and constantly resorting to the sale of at least part of their own labor power). It is precisely those masses which, even in the most democratic bourgeois republics, being equal before the law, were in fact kept from participation in political life and from the use of democratic rights and freedoms by thousands of tricks and stratagems, who are now drawn into constant and obligatory, and moreover decisive, participation in the democratic administration of the state.

15. That equality of citizens, irrespective of sex, religion, race, and nationality, which bourgeois democracy has always and everywhere promised, but nowhere carried out and, by virtue of the rule of capitalism, could not have carried out, Soviet power—or the dictatorship of the proletariat—carries out at once and completely, because only the power of workers, not interested in private property in the means of production and in fighting for their division and redivision, is capable of doing so.

16. The old, that is, bourgeois, democracy and parliamentarism were organized so that the masses of toilers were most of all alienated from the apparatus of administration. Soviet power, that is, the dictatorship of the proletariat, is on the contrary constructed so as to bring the masses of toilers close to the apparatus of administration. The same end is served by the fusion of legislative and executive power in the Soviet organization of the state and the replacement of territorial electoral constituencies with productive units, such as: factory, plant.

17. The military has been an apparatus of oppression not only under monarchy. It remained such in all bourgeois republics, even the most democratic ones. Only Soviet power, as a permanent state organization of precisely the classes oppressed by capitalism, is capable of destroying the subordination of the military to bourgeois command and of actually merging the proletariat with the army, of actually realizing the arming of the proletariat and the disarming of the bourgeoisie, without which the victory of socialism is impossible.

18. The Soviet organization of the state is adapted to the leading role of the proletariat as the class most concentrated and enlightened by capitalism. The experience of all revolutions and all movements of oppressed classes, the experience of the worldwide socialist movement, teaches us that only the proletariat is capable of uniting and leading behind itself the scattered and backward strata of the toiling and exploited population.

19. Only the Soviet organization of the state is capable of really breaking at once and destroying finally the old, that is, the bourgeois, bureaucratic and judicial apparatus, which was preserved and inevitably had to be preserved under capitalism even in the most democratic republics, being in fact the greatest obstacle to carrying democracy into practice for workers and toilers. The Paris Commune took the first world-historically significant step along this path; Soviet power—the second.

20. The destruction of state power is the goal which all socialists, Marx included and foremost among them, set for themselves. Without the realization of this goal true democracy—that is, equality and freedom—is unrealizable. And to this goal only Soviet, or proletarian, democracy leads in practice, for, by attracting mass organizations of the toilers to constant and obligatory participation in the administration of the state, it immediately begins to prepare the complete withering away of every state.

21. The complete bankruptcy of the socialists gathered in Berne, their complete failure to understand the new, that is, proletarian, democracy is evident particularly from the following. On February 10, 1919, Branting closed in Berne the international conference of the yellow International. On February 11, 1919, in Berlin, in the newspaper of its participants, "Die Freiheit," an appeal of the "Independent" party to the proletariat was published. In this appeal the bourgeois character of the Scheidemann government is acknowledged, and blame is placed on it for the desire to abolish the Soviets, which are called Träger und Schützer der Revolution—bearers and guardians of the revolution—and a proposal is made to legalize the Soviets, to give them state rights, to give them the right to suspend decisions of the National Assembly, with the matter being referred to a popular vote.

Such a proposal is complete intellectual bankruptcy on the part of theoreticians who defended democracy and did not understand its bourgeois character. The farcical attempt to unite the system of Soviets—that is, the dictatorship of the proletariat—with the National Assembly—that is, with the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie—exposes in full the wretchedness of thought of the yellow socialists and social-democrats and their political reactionism of petty bourgeois character and their cowardly concessions to the irrepressibly growing power of the new, proletarian, democracy.

22. In condemning Bolshevism, the majority of the yellow International in Berne, which did not dare to vote formally for the corresponding resolution out of fear of the working masses, was acting correctly from a class standpoint. It is precisely this majority which is fully in solidarity with the Russian Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries and with the Scheidemanns in Germany. The Russian Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, complaining of persecution by the Bolsheviks, attempt to conceal the fact that this persecution has been caused by the participation of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries in civil war on the side of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. In exactly the same way the Scheidemanns and their party have already demonstrated in Germany their own participation in civil war on the side of the bourgeoisie against the workers.

It is therefore completely natural that the majority of the participants in the Berne yellow International expressed themselves in favor of condemning the Bolsheviks. In this was expressed not a defense of "pure democracy," but self-defense by people who know and feel that in civil war they stand on the side of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.

This is why, from a class standpoint, one cannot fail to recognize as correct the decision of the majority of the yellow International. The proletariat must, without fear of truth, look it straight in the face and draw all the political conclusions from it.

Comrades! I would like to add something more to the last two points. I think that the comrades who are to report to us on the Berne conference will tell us about this in more detail.

Throughout the entire Berne conference not a single word was said about the significance of Soviet power. For over two years now we have been discussing this question in Russia. In April 1917, at a party conference, we had already raised the question theoretically and politically: "What is Soviet power, what is its content, what is its historical significance?" For almost two years now we have been discussing this question, and at our party congress we adopted a resolution on this matter{201}.

The Berlin "Freiheit" published on February 11 an appeal to the German proletariat, signed not only by the leaders of the Independent Social-Democrats of Germany, but by all members of the Independent faction. In August 1918 the foremost theoretician of these Independents, Kautsky, wrote in his pamphlet "The Dictatorship of the Proletariat" that he is a supporter of democracy and Soviet organs, but that the Soviets should have only economic significance and should by no means be recognized as state organizations. Kautsky repeats this same thing in issues of "Freiheit" from November 11 and January 12. On February 9 an article by Rudolf Hilferding appears, who is also considered one of the most prominent authoritative theoreticians of the Second International. He proposes to unite legally, by means of state legislation, the system of Soviets with the National Assembly. This was on February 9. On the 11th this proposal is adopted by the entire Independent party and published in the form of an appeal.

Despite the fact that the National Assembly already exists, even after "pure democracy" has been embodied in reality, even after the greatest theoreticians of the Independent Social-Democrats declared that Soviet organizations should not be state organizations, despite all this—again vacillation! This proves that these gentlemen have really understood nothing in the new movement and in the conditions of its struggle. But this also proves something else: there must be conditions, causes, that provoke this vacillation! After all these events, after this nearly two-year victorious revolution in Russia, when we are offered such resolutions as those adopted at the Berne conference, in which nothing is said about the Soviets and their significance, at which not a single delegate in a single speech mentioned this even with a single word, we can assert with complete justification that all these gentlemen, as socialists and theoreticians, have died for us.

But practically, from the standpoint of politics, this, comrades, is proof that a great shift is occurring among the masses—that these Independents, who were theoretically and principally opposed to these state organizations, suddenly propose such stupidity as the "peaceful" union of the National Assembly with the system of Soviets—that is, the union of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie with the dictatorship of the proletariat. We see how they have all gone bankrupt in a socialist and theoretical sense and what an enormous transformation is taking place among the masses. The backward masses of the German proletariat are coming to us, have come to us! The significance of the Independent party of German Social-Democrats, the best part of the Berne conference, from the theoretical and socialist points of view, is thus equal to zero; yet it retains a certain significance, and this consists in the fact that these vacillating elements serve us as an indicator of the mood of the backward parts of the proletariat. In this, in my conviction, lies the greatest historical significance of this conference. We experienced something similar in our revolution. Our Mensheviks traveled almost exactly the same path of development as the theoreticians of the Independents in Germany. At first, when they had a majority in the Soviets, they were for the Soviets. Then all you heard was: "Long live the Soviets!", "For the Soviets!", "Soviets—revolutionary democracy!" When we Bolsheviks gained the majority in the Soviets, they then sang a different tune: Soviets should not exist alongside the Constituent Assembly; and various Menshevik theoreticians made almost the same proposals as uniting the system of Soviets with the Constituent Assembly and including them in the state organization. Here once again it is revealed that the general course of proletarian revolution is the same throughout the world. First the spontaneous formation of Soviets, then their spread and development, further the appearance in practice of the question: Soviets or National Assembly, or Constituent Assembly, or bourgeois parliamentarism; complete bewilderment among the leaders and, finally—proletarian revolution. But I believe that after nearly two years of revolution we should not pose the question in such a way, but should adopt concrete decisions, for the spread of the system of Soviets is, for us and especially for the majority of West European countries, the most important task.

I would like to cite here just one Menshevik resolution. I asked comrade Obolenskii to translate it into German. He promised to do so, but unfortunately he is not here. I will try to reproduce it from memory, since I do not have the full text of this resolution.

For a foreigner, having heard nothing about Bolshevism, it is very difficult to form his own opinion about our disputed questions. Everything that the Bolsheviks assert the Mensheviks dispute, and vice versa. Of course, during struggle it cannot be otherwise; therefore it is very important that the final conference of the Menshevik party in December 1918 adopted a long, detailed resolution, which was published in full in the Menshevik "Printers' Gazette"{202}. In this resolution the Mensheviks themselves briefly set forth the history of class struggle and civil war. The resolution states that they condemn those groups of their party which are in alliance with the propertied classes in the Urals, in the South, in the Crimea, and in Georgia—and all these regions are enumerated. Those groups of the Menshevik party which went against Soviet power in alliance with the propertied classes are now condemned in the resolution, and the final point condemns even those who have gone over to the communists. From this it follows: the Mensheviks are forced to acknowledge that there is no unity in their party and that they stand either on the side of the bourgeoisie or on the side of the proletariat. The majority of Mensheviks went over to the side of the bourgeoisie and during civil war fought against us. We, of course, persecute the Mensheviks; we even shoot them when they fight against our Red Army in the war against us and shoot our red commanders. We answered the war of the bourgeoisie with the war of the proletariat—there can be no other outcome. Thus, from a political standpoint all this is merely Menshevik hypocrisy. It is historically incomprehensible how people not officially declared insane could, at the behest of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, speak at the Berne conference about the struggle of the Bolsheviks against them, but remain silent about their own struggle in alliance with the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.

They all assail us bitterly because we persecute them. This is true. But they say not a word about what participation they themselves took in civil war! I believe that I must provide for the record the full text of the resolution, and I ask the foreign comrades to pay attention to this resolution, for it is a historical document in which the question is posed correctly and which provides the best material for evaluating the dispute among "socialist" tendencies in Russia. Between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie there exists yet a class of people inclined sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another; this has always been so in all revolutions, and it is absolutely impossible that in capitalist society, where the proletariat and bourgeoisie form two hostile camps, there should be no intermediate strata between them. The existence of these vacillating elements is historically inevitable, and, unfortunately, such elements, which do not themselves know on which side they will fight tomorrow, will exist for a considerable time yet.

I wish to make a practical proposal, which consists in adopting a resolution in which three points should be specially emphasized.

First: one of the most important tasks for comrades from West European countries consists in explaining to the masses the significance, importance, and necessity of the system of Soviets. There is insufficient understanding on this question. If Kautsky and Hilferding, as theoreticians, have gone bankrupt, the latest articles in "Freiheit" nevertheless prove that they are correctly depicting the mood of the backward parts of the German proletariat. The same thing happened with us: in the first eight months of the Russian revolution the question of the Soviet organization was much discussed, and it was unclear to the workers what the new system consisted of and whether Soviets could form a state apparatus. In our revolution we moved forward not by the theoretical path but by the practical one. For instance, we did not raise the question of the Constituent Assembly theoretically beforehand and did not say that we did not recognize the Constituent Assembly. Only later, when Soviet organizations spread throughout the country and conquered political power, only then did we decide to disperse the Constituent Assembly. Now we see that in Hungary and Switzerland the question stands much more acutely{203}. On the one hand, this is very good: we derive from it firm confidence that the revolution in West European states is proceeding faster and will bring us great victories. On the other hand, there lies in this a certain danger, namely that the struggle will be so rapid that the consciousness of the working masses will not keep pace with such development. The significance of the system of Soviets is even now not clear to large masses of politically educated German workers, since they have been educated in the spirit of parliamentarism and in bourgeois prejudices.

Second: on the spread of the system of Soviets. When we hear how rapidly the idea of Soviets is spreading in Germany and even in England, this is for us the most important proof that proletarian revolution will be victorious. One can retard its course only for a short time. It is another matter when comrades Albert and Platten tell us that in their villages among rural workers and the peasantry there are almost no Soviets. I read in "Rote Fahne" an article against peasant Soviets, but, quite correctly, for Soviets of agricultural laborers and rural poor{204}. The bourgeoisie and its lackeys, such as Scheidemann and Co., have already raised the slogan: peasant Soviets. But we need only Soviets of agricultural laborers and rural poor. Unfortunately, from the reports of comrades Albert, Platten, and others we see that, with the exception of Hungary, very little is being done for the spread of the Soviet system to the countryside. In this, perhaps, lies a real and rather significant practical danger for achieving reliable victory by the German proletariat. Victory can be considered assured only when not only urban workers are organized but also rural proletarians, and organized not as formerly—in trade unions and cooperatives—but in Soviets. Victory came to us more easily because in October 1917 we went with the peasantry, with all the peasantry. In this sense our revolution then was bourgeois. The first step of our proletarian government consisted in the fact that the old demands of all the peasantry, expressed even under Kerensky by peasant Soviets and assemblies, were recognized in the law issued by our government on October 26 (old style) 1917, the day after the revolution. In this lay our strength, and that is why it was so easy for us to conquer an overwhelming majority. For the countryside our revolution still continued to be bourgeois, and only later, half a year on, we were forced within the framework of state organization to initiate class struggle in the villages, establishing in each village committees of the poor, semi-proletarians, and to struggle systematically with the rural bourgeoisie. For us this